Such rules will have far reaching implications on all land within Auburn city limits, affecting how residents, businesses, property owners land developers operate and develop their properties.

And how the City of Auburn carries out future capital projects and performs maintenance and operations activities.

While Auburn and other communities in the state have been voluntarily adopting low-impact-development-related regulations for several years, the edict from Washington state’s Department of Ecology has just come down: cities have to have such low-Impact-development-related regulations and standards in place by Dec. 31, 2016.

Which, of course, will affect a project’s bottom line.

Brice Maryman of the consultant group SVR/MIG recently provided City Councilmembers with an introduction to LID and its potential benefits to and affects on Auburn, the beginning of a series of presentations that the consultant and staff will make to the council and planning commission over the next 12 months as part of its broader publication efforts.

“What’s important to understand about low-impact development is that this is something that all communities in the state of Washington are dealing with,” Kevin Snyder, Auburn’s director of community development and public works, told the City Council last week. “This is something that has been voluntary for the last several years, and some communities have moved forward on. We have done some of that ourselves, but we are now in the position of facing a requirement to operate in a low-impact-development world.”

“Low-impact development really is coming down from the federal and state levels and becoming a mandate for cities. … This region has been a pioneer in this type of strategy. So we’re going to be borrowing and learning a lot from the area around us and tailoring that mandate towards the City of Auburn,” Maryman said, citing such areas as stormwater runoff and street surfaces.

A multi-department team called the LID Core Group has met throughout 2015 to conduct needed analyses of current City codes and regulations to identify where updates will be needed and to recommend changes.